The major cause of this is a lack of affordable and reliable alternative sources of energy, and where alternatives do exist, such as kerosene and gas, the majority of people are too poor to afford them.

A new project, ‘Energy Alternative Sources’, to save the forest has been set up by the Uganda National Farmers Federation (UNFFE) that involves recycling agricultural waste to manufacture charcoal briquettes which are an affordable alternative to charcoal and firewood.

Through binding together agricultural waste in a kiln, a charcoal briquette is created that has a wide range of biomass, and provides an alternative to further deterioration of the forest. The charcoal briquettes have encouraged farmers to practice good environmental management, as well as getting women involved in the manufacturing process. The briquettes are cheap, readily accessible and offer a long-term sustainable solution to conservation agricultural practices, turning waste into energy.

Share this content:

For the past 18 months, the UK’s Guardian newspaper has been tracking the development work going on in one Ugandan village called Katine in what it plans to be a three-year project.

The Katine project focuses on five key areas (education, health, water, governance, and livelihoods), all of which influence and are influenced quite directly by agriculture.

The role that agriculture plays in shaping development outcomes for the Katine villagers has already been highlighted in a number of articles, for instance:

- Video: Growing New Strains of Cassava to Improve Livelihoods

In recent years, [cassava] crops have been devastated by viruses leading to two years of severely reduced harvests…’The old cassava used to be affected by diseases.  It used to rot quickly from disease and also it used to take a long time to fully mature.

- Article: Are Big Farms the key to African Development?

as the demand for food and jobs expands exponentially, the question is less whether big farms are necessary to making a country’s food secure than how to get there as equitably as possible.

These two eamples highlight the need to build local access, protect harvests, enable access to markets, and prioritise research imperatives.  This project also aims to help the villagers in Katine get their voices heard by those who might otherwise have little access to their perspectives.  Sharing knowledge and experiences like this is also a key aspect of the Farming First plan.

Share this content:

It also occurs at times when the demand for labour is quite high and needed for many farm activities.

Crop protection products such as herbicides and the adoption of best practices can help reduce this burden.

In the Ugandan case study, farmers found that adopting conservation agriculture practices greatly reduced the labour they needed for weeding, sometimes by as much as 50 days worth of labour.  Thus, instead of requiring 73 days under their usual pattern, they only needed 22 days when using herbicide, or even as few as 5 days when practicing no-till.

Share this content:

Important tips on growing crops are relayed from the Uganda National Farmers Federation headquarters to district level offices, and then to 24 ‘village phone centres’, in which each farmers’ group owns a mobile phone.

The farmers also send and receive SMS messages with updates on market prices, saving at times a whole day’s travel to market with help from the program, which is sponsored by the Syngenta Foundation.

For example, Milly Sekandi is a member of Zibula Atudde Women’s Group.  After she purchased a village phone, she and other farmers who grow upland rice and maize are now able to confirm prices in Kampala and the border trading markets in Busia, Kenya. A few years ago it would have been the middlemen who dictated the price and made the most profit from sales.

Share this content: